Jim Albanese: Salinas Valley winds nearly spoiled parachute act

5:50 AM,
May 6, 2013

Written by

Jim Albanese
Wayback Machine

The bravest person ever, in my opinion, was the first person to use a parachute. The reference books say the first successful parachute descent was by a French physicist, Sebastien Lenormand, who, in 1783, took a flying leap off a tower in Paris.

So it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that people would pay money to watch French physicists or anyone else leap from great heights. One of those folks was L.L. Hill, self-styled "Professor" Hill, who took a traveling troupe of aeronauts around the country in the first decade of the 20th century.